Trail of Tears
by Trogdor19
Summary: 9x16. Daryl wants to know what Carol sees when she looks at him, and it's more than he expected.
1. Chapter 1: What She Sees

_**Author's Note: **_

_This is set between episodes 9x15 and 9x16 (spoiler alert!), expanded out and taking off from canon from a moment in the Sneak Peek preview, because there is no way the show is going to give us as happy of an ending for Caryl as I'm about to. And also because it is A GREAT MOMENT. _

_Summary of the preview, if you haven't seen it: Carol says she can't look at Lydia without thinking of Henry. Daryl asks what she sees when she looks at him. She's surprised and responds that she sees him, then links arms and Ezekiel looks back just in time to see them walking arm in arm together. I am afraid to hope of what the show might be hinting toward with that moment, so I'm going to write my own version._

_Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended._

* * *

**Chapter 1: What She Sees**

Her feet hurt. From the cold and the broken, unforgiving pavement. Carol appreciated it, because it drew her attention away from the pain in her chest. It shouldn't be so physical, grief, but this time, it had hit her like a hard flu. Henry. And right after, the pipes going out, the lack of food, the loss of the Kingdom.

She was a fallen queen, and she felt like one.

Daryl's dog trotted by her and her eyes followed it. The animal was a blessing, for all of them, but then Daryl had always done that. Found little ways to keep their group going, so naturally she wasn't sure he realized he was doing it. When her daughter was missing, he'd brought a flower stuffed in a forlorn beer bottle, like that was the only hope left he could scrape up…and he gave it all to her.

_"It's a Cherokee Rose."_

She could hear his voice still, so young and tentative, telling her the story of the Cherokee Rose and the bereft mothers on the Trail of Tears. People marching along away from their stolen homes, away from the graves of their children. She stumbled and an acrid bitterness filled her throat. It was what they were doing, right now, but there wasn't a rose in sight.

But then again, this wasn't their first trail of tears.

Daryl's footsteps whispered behind her like they were just another memory. They'd wandered the roads together, in that first frigid winter after they lost Sophia and the farm. They'd wandered the roads after the prison and before Alexandria. Starving, for most of it. Grieving for lost children. Walking toward people they hadn't even met yet, that they didn't know they would love. That they didn't know they'd someday grieve.

Carol's throat tightened until it was too narrow for tears. She had a whole new understanding for the phrase, "Rest in Peace." The peaceful ones were the dead. Sophia was lucky, because she hadn't had to go through everything that was coming next.

Carol never thought she would have lived so long herself. She shouldn't have, hadn't ever deserved to, and yet she always did, somehow.

Her eyes fixed on Lydia's slumped shoulders. The girl was weak, skittish. It was a bad trade, Henry's life for hers. He'd had so much hope and energy, would have made a great leader someday, or maybe even more important, a great plumber. He'd fixed those pipes a thousand times and they hadn't lasted a full week without him. It was like he was the real heart of the Kingdom and once he was gone, so was it.

"You know, Henry wanted her here. When no one else did." Daryl's gruff voice came from just behind her shoulder, like the voice of her better nature. "She's a good kid."

There was no reproach in his voice, but she didn't miss the appeal. He'd cared enough about the girl to claim her as one of them, and he wanted Carol to claim her, too. He had a good pure heart, Daryl did. But Carol didn't. And she couldn't forgive as easily as he did.

"Every time I look at her, I just see him."

She could feel his eyes on her. Watching, like they had after Sophia's funeral. Like they had in Atlanta. He could sense it when she was hurting most. He hesitated, looked at the ground.

"What do you see when you look at me?"

She was so surprised to hear him say it, she actually glanced over. There was guilt under his words, a perfect match to her own, but there was more than that, too. Something in his tone…it was like he was voicing the one thing they never talked about. It was like he was finally asking if she wanted more, too.

Even if she was wrong, and he was just about his guilt, the answer was the same.

"I see _you_," she assured him, gently chiding. That would never change. He should know it, after all these years.

She tucked her hand into his arm, the rough wool of his new poncho tickling her knuckles. It was easier for the next few steps, walking with him like it didn't matter which road they were on this time. What they were running from and what they were running to. It felt like she already knew, like she'd flipped ahead and knew there was a next chapter full of bright sunlight and piles of ripe tomatoes and laughing children. There was always a next chapter, no matter how many times she'd tried to slam the book closed.

Ezekiel twisted on his horse to look back, and even when his gaze paused on them, Carol didn't loosen her grip. She used to hide all her relationships from Ed so he'd feel important. She'd never deigned that kind of control over her life to Ezekiel, and he'd never asked for it.

After a longer moment than usual, he turned back around, allowing them what privacy there was on the road.

It was easier when she held onto Daryl, so she allowed herself one step, two, three, before she turned her attention to what she knew he needed from her.

"Connie told me everything you did for Henry. At the Hilltop, and when you got him back from Alpha." She smiled softly at Daryl. "She wrote it all out in tiny little print, used up her entire little notebook. It's her only way to speak, when she's away from her interpreter. You could see how hard it was for her to hand it over, but she did it anyway. For you."

Daryl huffed. "Shouldn'ta wasted a page. Didn't matter. None of it meant shit, in the end." His fist clenched on the strap of his crossbow.

Carol had gotten her another notebook from the Kingdom's precious hoard of paper. The smile that dawned on Connie's face had let Carol know that she hadn't thought there was another notebook left within 50 miles when she used up hers explaining Daryl's heroics in taking on Alpha's lieutenant and her whole army. How he wouldn't even let Connie come and help when he went in to rescue Henry.

Carol squeezed his arm, her thumb rubbing down his bicep. Dead hard, just like his whole body had been the whole time she'd known him. Sometimes bonier, sometimes thicker with well-fed muscle, but all his softness stayed hidden deep inside.

"It's so comforting to take the blame," she said quietly. "Both of us looking for every little choice we made wrong. Pretending it's our fault because we want to believe we're in control."

Daryl's steps slowed as he looked at her, but she just kept walking.

"Because the alternative is that we can't stop it. No matter how strong we become, no matter how smart, no matter how brutal, our people keep dying."

Carol's face was numb and she didn't change expression, but she could feel the splash of cold when a tear broke loose and skimmed her cheek on the way to the ground. Daryl flinched.

He kept her hand tucked under his arm, even when their position grew awkward, because of course he did. He never reached for her, but when she reached for him, he'd hold her and never be the one to let go.

She turned to look more fully at him. "We've done _impossible_ things," she choked out, her throat scratchy from so much crying over the past few days. "You've burned an entire herd just by yourself. I've wiped out whole civilizations. We took on the city of Atlanta overrun with walkers with just a handful of people and we rescued Beth. She still died. We brought down Negan's vast empire down to the last peon at the Sanctuary. Rick still died. We've done things no single person should ever be able to do, much less _have_ to do, and we still can't protect the people that we love."

A hard hand latched onto Carol's shoulder, its strength squeezing even through all her layers of scarves and coats.

"We ain't ashes," Michonne whispered and Carol stopped and just stared at her.

Someone's tongue clicked and the wagon horses veered around her and still she didn't move. Daryl had said that to her when they were alone in Atlanta. She'd never told another living soul and he _never_ would have.

Michonne smiled, pain in her eyes. "He said that to me, after Rick—" Her voice broke and she swallowed. "To keep me going. To remind me that I hadn't lost everyone I loved, and they hadn't lost me. To give me a reason to keep trying to save people."

After they'd found Henry's head on a pike, Daryl had taken her back to the Kingdom, and he hadn't brought her to Ezekiel. He went to break the news to Ezekiel himself and he handed off Carol to Michonne. They talked all night in the basement of one of the school's rooms, the two women. About the children they'd lost and the kids they'd had to kill. Because there was no other choice. She wasn't sure if Daryl had known that they had that in common or if he had another reason, but Michonne's thin, brutally strong arms had held her through that night. When the Kingdom fell, it was her quiet voice that had invited them to join Alexandria.

For all the times she'd talked to other bereaved mothers in this terrible and broken world, it was the only time Carol had met another woman with the same stain on her soul she had on her own. The only time she'd been able to voice the thing she knew every other human would have judged her for. That she wished she'd never loved Henry. That she was so, so sorry she'd ever loved Mika or Lizzie or Benjamin or even poor Sam. Sophia was hers, and she never had a choice. But after Sophia's terrible end, she knew better and she kept doing it anyway. But then, that's what she'd just been trying to tell Daryl.

"We don't get to save people," she told them both. "We want to believe it's up to us and it just isn't." Tears blurred her vision. Daryl hugged her hand into his side and she lifted her free hand to cover Michonne's. "It doesn't stop," she whispered to these two people who'd been through all of it with her. "People come and go, and we love them and they die. We can fight harder and better than people have ever fought before, and that's still the way it will always be."

She could feel that road stretching out ahead of them into the next chapter, into the next group of people she wouldn't be able to help but love, and she was so goddamn tired that even holding onto both her best friends, it was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling.

There was peace in death, and she was ready for peace. But Daryl's arm trembled slightly, and Michonne's fingers were too thin, and she knew she'd never leave them before she had to.

"Michonne!" The other woman glanced away toward the voice calling her, breaking the moment. Before she went, she stopped to hug Carol.

"When you save someone," the taller woman whispered, "you don't save their lives for good, but you buy them a little more time. All of us have bought a few more days and a few more days for Judith until she's nearly grown. And every day, that girl changes my ideas about what I thought I knew."

She didn't try to tell Carol it was worth it. She just squeezed one more time and went off to help whichever of her people was calling her, and Carol loved her for not trying to cheapen a hard truth with an easy answer.

She and Daryl started walking again. His dog came back to check on him and Daryl's free hand scruffed over his ears before the dog ranged away.

"I know you'd never say 's my fault," Daryl growled. "But you don't know. I's the one who made sure they were both locked up together, made sure he talked to her. Let him get attached. I's the one that let him keep Lydia when I could have knocked him over the head and dragged him back home. Kid can't—couldn't track worth a damn. Never would have found her. I's the one that brought 'em back to the Kingdom when I shoulda kept them going toward the next sunset and never stopped walking. Couldn't stand the idea that you'd never know what happened to him, even if it meant he'd be safe. Stupid."

She dropped her head to his arm, hugging him a little. "Guess you know me a little bit after all," she said. "And if you think I would have ever stopped looking for _both_ of you, well, that is stupid."

He huffed out a breath.

"Do you know why I came back from that little graveyard house?"

He hesitated. "For Glenn. Cause Morgan's dumbass told ya about him and Abraham, even though he swore he wouldn't."

"That wasn't it. Not all of it." A cold gust of wind tickled the free strands of her hair around the edges of her hat. "I thought if I could get away from everybody I loved, then I could be a good person again."

She glanced over to check on Judith, riding up in the wagon. Rick and Michonne's daughter waved at her, her smile bright but her eyes sharp on the countryside around them.

"I did my most terrible things all for the people I loved and part of me—most of me, really—wanted to stop. Stop loving. Stop hating myself. Stop waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares of things I never could have imagined I was capable of."

Michonne rode by, back on her tall horse now, and Carol didn't drop her voice, because it wouldn't hurt her friend to hear the same things.

"I was the same person, alone in that house. And not seeing everybody didn't take away how much I loved them. Not Glenn, not Abraham, not you." She shot him a glance. "Even for all those years after we lost Rick and I barely saw you every six months. Didn't feel a whit different than when you used to fall asleep next to me on the ground, so close I could count the days since your last shower."

He exhaled the gruffest hint of a laugh at their old running joke about showers.

"I wasn't any better," she said. "Just lonely. All those things were still in me, and I realized I couldn't live without people. So I compromised. I went to the Kingdom, where I cared about everyone, but a little…less." She had dropped her voice now, so none of her new people would hear her say it. "It didn't hurt as much as Alexandria. It didn't have as much history for me. Except Henry…"

"Never could hold back when it came to kids," Daryl answered for her. "You're a mom. Ain't right, not to love a kid." His gaze flicked to Lydia again.

"Don't think I don't see who you're looking at," she said dryly, but her smile fell away more quickly than she could help. "I'll come around," she murmured. "Just give me some time, for her."

"She saw you with Henry. Saw what a mom oughta be like," he said. "Meant something to her."

Carol wasn't sure they were still talking about Lydia. Or Henry.

She cocked her head so Daryl would look over at her. "I am who I am," she said. "I'll turn myself inside out to do the right thing, until people threaten my family and then all bets are off. I found my peace with who I am, in that little house with the graveyard out front."

It had been the day he'd come to see her. His knuckles were scuffed and bloody from hurting another person, just the way Ed's used to be from beating her. And she hadn't loved Daryl one bit less with bloody hands than she had with clean. It took her a little longer to get past the uneasy part of her stomach that didn't want to apply that to herself, but it was a different world than the one she'd been raised in, and nobody made it in this world with clean hands.

When she'd first met him, he'd never look her in the eye for more than a second, like he was afraid of what she'd see. Now, he held her eyes as long as she'd look back, no matter how raw both of them were. That's what he did now, blue to blue and bloodshot with all the evidence of tears they hadn't shed in front of each other.

"When I look at you," she said, "I don't see Henry. Because you were with me before I ever knew him and god_damn_ it—" her voice broke on the curse, on the cruelty of the truth. "You'll be with me after he's gone."

Daryl broke her gaze, a ferocious cough rattling out of him that shook her hand still hugged tight under his arm. She knew what it was. He'd always coughed and cleared his throat rather than let his voice break, or blew snot rockets so he'd never sniffle. So she pressed her shoulder to his, and she kept walking.

And as often as he'd look back, she looked at him so he'd see what she saw.

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_Author's Note: There's going to be 3-4 more chapters of this to get to a happily ever after, so hit that follow button!_


	2. Ch 2: What He Sees

**Chapter 2: What He Sees**

They shouldn't risk a fire, but the kids wouldn't last the night without it. Daryl would crack and burn his own bones before he'd let another child die in front of Carol.

She said he couldn't save anyone anymore and she was goddamn right. Woman was _right._

But he'd still kill the fuck out of anything he could reach with his knives, until his last breath. He'd thought he was for-sure-gonna-die enough times by now that he'd just stopped listening to that shit and kept fighting anyway.

Daryl wasn't sure he was ever going to sleep again. There was something riding through him. An electricity, a purpose. Whatever it was, it came in capital letters and black ink and there wasn't no arguing with it. And it was entirely focused on whatever she needed. Carol, not Lydia, though he was painfully fucking aware that the teen girl had nobody else these days. The group had mostly turned on her, and she had no family. Only friend was dead. Had Connie on her side but couldn't talk to her.

Lydia hadn't figured out yet that if you let your hands talk the most obvious way, Connie was smart enough to pretty much pick up what you were laying down, even if you were saying it all wrong for her language. Lydia just didn't even try. To talk to Connie, or anyone else. Probably, Daryl was going to have to do something about that soon, but he didn't know what. Right now, he was just paying attention to Carol. To what walkers and whisperers the cloudy night might hide, the snow that might steal fingers and toes before morning. He had to do what he had to do, no matter who he couldn't fucking save.

It was something he'd never felt, before the change. That black ink verdict that ran insistently through his veins now, lighting him up with purpose. Wished he had. Mighta made something of himself. Not that all the green paper he could have made back then would be anything to pour at her feet now, but it still woulda been nice. To have something to tell her about who he'd been.

Then again, he figured Carol seemed like she'd always known him. Even back when they were only weeks together, the two o' them. He'd be screaming in her face and she'd just be looking him down. Way, way down into him where nobody'd ever been and it scared the shit out of him. The way she knew him before they'd even met. How strong she was, and how she seemed to just…float…in the muck that sucked the rest of them straight on under.

She was something different, Carol was, and he knew it before anyone else. Even Rick, smart as the other guy was. Hadn't done Rick any good, though.

Even Carol couldn't save people, not anymore.

Funny how even her king looked like a tin can knight when he stood next to her. Fucker knew it, too, and he talked twice as loud for it. Couldn't fault him, though. Man had built tall walls and kept her fed. Gave her more happy years than Rick and Daryl had ever managed, really.

Daryl kicked the fire without thinking, the toe of his threadbare boot catching the end of a log. He'd been trying to build it small and hot, but the outburst sent it off-center and Nabila took it over with quiet hands and a wide-eyed look at him underneath that hair-scarf she always wore.

If he were a better man, he'd feel sorry for the king. Losing his second son this way, right before his kingdom. Having lost all his people, all that time ago. Daryl knew a bit about what that was like, more than most. Didn't wish it on anybody, not even the king.

Guy coulda been his enemy. Daryl had never had patience for people with a big voice and not much to back it up. But Ezekiel had a heart and half a brain, and he'd made his fucking fairy tale real for a few years, for a few dozen people. Including Carol. For that, he won the closest thing to a free pass that Daryl had to give out.

Plus, the tiger had liked him. And that tiger had been motherfucking smart.

Daryl didn't let himself dwell on too many regrets—when you lived in the ocean, you didn't fuss about getting wet—but not getting more time to get to know that tiger was one of 'em. Thing had been even smarter than Dog. Maybe.

He whistled without thinking, low and in that frequency they'd learned walkers didn't hear too good. Dog bounded up less than a second later and Daryl checked his eyes. Alert, but not hyper-alert the way they got when he'd found something worth barking at.

"Good dog." He scratched his ears, picked off a tick and flicked it into the fire, and Dog trotted off…straight to Carol, who was sitting on the other side of the fire. Dog flopped down with his head in her lap, like he'd spent years there. Wasn't like Dog to nap, even by a fire. Had more energy than three animals would know what to do with.

Daryl considered, uneasily, if Dog might be picking up more from him than he said in words. Wasn't the first time it had seemed like it, and the insistence of that black ink electricity running through him felt loud enough the walkers ought to be hearing it.

Well. Couldn't hurt. If Carol was distracted enough by her grief that her guard slipped, Dog'd kill the first thing or two to come at her. By then, Carol'd have her head back in the game and her knife in somebody's temple.

He shrugged his crossbow off his back, checked the string for moisture. Checked the bolt, the action, slung it onto his back again. Checked Lydia, wrapped in his spare blanket a little further from the fire than he'd like. Connie was next to her, and when he shifted his weight to walk the perimeter, she lifted a hand, gestured the exact shape of their camp, then shook her head. Tapped her wrist, gestured 2. She'd just checked it, two minutes ago. He ducked his head in thanks, made his fingers walk through the air. She shook her head. _No walkers._ She glanced at Lydia, then gave him a pointed stare.

He looked at the ground.

The fuck was he supposed to say to her? Sorry I got your boyfriend killed? Sorry everybody hates you? You cold? Making conversation with a teenaged girl was not in his wheelhouse. He could tell from here that she was as warm and dry as she was getting tonight, what with the big storm Jerry's fancy watch told him was coming in the morning. Wasn't no point in talking past that. He scowled at Connie. She laughed.

Touched her temple, then rolled her eyes. _Should have known._

He blew out an aggravated breath and turned away.

"She likes you. You should know that, but I'm betting you don't."

Somehow, Carol had gone from relaxing by the fire with Dog to stirring the pot of the few scraps of food they had, boiled with enough water to make them stretch. And he hadn't even noticed.

No wonder she thought he couldn't save anyone.

Dog nudged her thigh, offering a fairly fresh walker thigh and she patted him and shook her head. Dog hurried off to enjoy the treat for himself, now that she hadn't wanted it, and Daryl felt an entirely ridiculous twist in his own gut at her rejection.

"You could do worse than Connie," Carol said, her back to the other woman so she couldn't read her lips. "You've never talked much, and she seems to understand you just fine. Plus, she's pretty." She slanted a glance across the fire. "And tough. Wouldn't be easy to kill."

Daryl just stared. Carol didn't talk much about what she thought of other people, but he could always tell. The ones she talked the sunniest to, she respected the least. Most people, she kept at arm's length because she figured they'd be dead sooner rather than later. She wasn't wrong.

Women had made eyes at him before, when Carol was around. Usually, she made this tiny little exhalation through her nose. Like, "Hmph!" Like if he was dumb enough to follow his dick over there, she wouldn't be surprised, but that girl would end up meat before long and he'd be putting her down so don't come crying to her when it happened.

Had happened. Twice.

'Bout ten or more times past that, he'd listened to her little, "Hmph!" and so then, when he eventually had to put down the women, he didn't have the nagging sadness of having shared his blankets with them first.

She'd never said she approved. Not once.

He hadn't really considered that Connie might be thinking about him that way. Been distracted, by Henry and Beta and Alpha and not fucking up the one time Carol had asked him for a damned thing. But now that Carol brought attention to it, he thought she might be right. Connie was pretty. And she didn't seem to mind him, in a way that always got under his skin when it happened. Basically, the three times it had_ ever_ happened. In a long fucking life.

Daryl touched Carol's arm. She was wearing a coat he'd scavenged "just in case" a couple years back and had passed over just a couple of days ago without ever having worn it himself. He preferred being a little cold and knowing there was a coat still in his pack.

And he preferred Carol wearing it by really a whole fuck of a lot.

"Need help with the stew?"

She slanted him a look that had more of a laugh in it than their circumstances really merited. But his help with cooking began and ended with providing heat and getting rid of the intestines of whatever animal he'd killed. Years alone hadn't moved his cooking beyond making it to where he could consume something without getting sick.

Still he ducked his head and fought his own smile, because he liked it when she looked at him like she knew him. "A'right," he said. "Be over there, if you need me."

He didn't have to say it, but he did.

#

She didn't have to seek him out, but she did. The fire had burned low and the scent of smoke covered the walker stink that haunted every forest he'd been in for years.

They'd eaten, but she wasn't done. Her son barely four days dead and she still looked to Daryl before herself.

"Connie would be good for you," Carol said before she even sat down. "She's got hope yet." She settled her bowl in her lap, barely filled with water and one lump of something that wasn't water. Daryl frowned at that sorry excuse for a meal, processed her words, then frowned at them, too.

"And she has family." Carol sipped her soup. "Not too many people can say that these days, biologically anyway, and family's always been important to you."

"Don't want her like that," Daryl grunted. He hated that she was talking about women when he was lost in the black ink, I'll-do-anything void of his own grief, worrying about hers.

Carol slashed a look at him and this time, she didn't look calm. She looked like she might scream, and he somehow knew if she ever did, they'd all die. "Why not."

He couldn't take a breath to answer her, even if he knew what to say. Not with her looking like that.

"What are you waiting for?" she spat out. "So long, so many years, so many women looking to you with a whole future in their eyes you could have had, time and again." Her eyes went glistening with tears that were too close to the surface this week. He fucking hated it when she cried. "What are you waiting for, anymore? You know we're crossing Alpha's stupid borders tomorrow. You've seen her herd. We've got the snowstorm from hell, fourteen bullets, and a double handful of half-starved civilians and children. Are you waiting for the _prom_?"

Her tone cut so deep he couldn't breathe for a long second, hating so bad that she was hurting that it took him too long to sort out what she was saying. And then he remembered everything she said this morning. Carol had lived a full life, even after the walkers. More than he ever had. She'd had several families, several homes. She'd made lives for more people than would ever even realize she'd done it.

She knew that loving something was like putting a loaded gun to your chest and knowing that someday, it _would_ fire.

"Only one future I care to hurt for," he growled, bristling. "Don't exist."

"Doesn't _exist_?" she spat back at him, staring like he was crazy. "Have you seen how beautiful that woman is? How she looks at you? How she fights beside you? She's _right there_, Daryl."

He looked back at her. That black ink, must-do electricity filled him until it felt like all his skin would explode and burn the whole forest down. Didn't say a thing, because they'd never said it. He would never say it, if it might make her hate him. But he couldn't stop himself from dropping his eyes to her ring.

She'd worn it so long it had dented her finger, and even in a world where money meant nothing, he wouldn't have even known where to look to find her as big of a diamond as the king had.

Her knuckles clenched tight, the ring poking out even more so the stone caught the firelight and dazzled magical prisms across the knees of his worn-out pants.

"Oh," she said. "Oh."


	3. Chapter 3: The Part No One Saw

**Chapter 3: The Part No One Saw**

People were already bedding down to sleep when Carol found Ezekiel. He'd been making his rounds around the camp, chatting with people and lifting their spirits. Telling stories of Alexandria and the wonders that would await them in their new home. The warmth of the sun there, because it was a few thousand feet lower elevation there and at Hilltop than it was at the Kingdom…just enough to make sure their growing season was longer, their frosts less harsh. They had rich dirt that didn't have to be imported and hauled into raised bed gardens, and they had newer pipes and solar panels.

She waited until he was done glad-handing and baby kissing, and had claimed a rock alone in the shadows of the forest, far enough from the fire that the shadows draped silvery lines across the salt and pepper ropes of his dreadlocks. They were shades of gray, both of them, when it came to each other.

They weren't right, but they weren't wrong either.

She stopped and tilted her head, studying him without bothering to ask. The lines of grief in his face ran deep enough that it looked like it took him an effort to raise his head and smile at her. But he still did, and it made relief settle deep in her. He was okay. She would still have to say what she came to say, even if he wasn't, but it was better this way.

"Jerry says the storm should hit mid-morning tomorrow," Ezekiel said. "I wanted to keep moving all night but Daryl insisted that once we left the road, we'd get turned around if we tried to travel in the dark."

She nodded. "Jesus got lost for three days in this forest, once. Said he had to eat a chunk of his own boot to make it home before he starved."

"But if we don't—"

"If we don't travel all night, the only way to get to the next way station before the storm is to take the short cut across Alpha's borders," Carol said softly. "I know."

"You said we shouldn't fight her."

"I said if we fought her, we'd lose people, and I wouldn't do that unless I had to." Carol pulled off her scarf and used it to insulate a damp rock so she could sit down next to Ezekiel. "We don't have the supplies to wait out a storm. Don't have the coats and blankets we'd need. We'd lose people if we tried. Have to watch them freeze to death slow. They'd rather fight, and a lot of them want to fight anyway, after what happened to Henry and Tara and the others. This way, we don't have to wrestle with our own people to keep them from going after Alpha, and we get a shortcut to beat the storm." She shrugged again. "Most likely, we'll only hit one of her satellite forces if we chart a course far from the main camp. That's manageable, especially in the daylight when we can see which of the walkers are carrying knives."

What she didn't say was that if they hit the main body of Alpha's herd army out in the open, they couldn't win. Not if they had every good fighter left in the settled world, and certainly not now, burdened with supplies, the elderly, and the children the way that they were. They were impossible odds, but all she could do was choose the most likely road, fight as hard as she could, and hope for the best. The results weren't up to her. Never had been.

"Right. You've thought of everything, as you always do." His smile turned fond, gentle. "What would I do without you, my queen?"

Guilt stabbed at her, her chest tightening as if she missed him. Because she would. She already did, in a way.

"You'd be just fine," she said. "You were a king before me, remember?"

"What is a king without a kingdom?" He looked down, the shadows deepening so she could no longer make out his face, though she could hear the pain in him.

"What is a rose by any other name?" She tipped her head and smiled, reaching out to squeeze his chilled hand. "You told me once you were just a guy with a tiger, but even without a tiger, you were a king. You'll be what your people need you to be in order for them to survive, just like you always have."

"You will, too," he insisted, but then his smile turned wry. "Though I expect you'll take this move as an excuse to get people to stop calling you my Queen."

"That's because I wasn't ever a queen. Not theirs, not yours. Not one at all." In the cover of the twilight, she slipped his ring off her finger.

They'd never had a wedding. He'd wanted a big extravagant royal ceremony, but she'd refused. She put on his ring, she gave Henry and the Kingdom a royal family, but she'd never taken a vow.

So now, she simply handed it back.

He looked at the circle, small in his palm. Flipped it over with his thumb and rubbed the worn gold.

Ezekiel smiled sadly. "It's to be today, then? I always wondered if it might go that way."

"You always _knew_," she corrected, not unkindly. "We made our deal for the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is gone." Henry was gone. She didn't say it, but it was true. Henry and the Kingdom had needed her, and she'd needed hope. Ezekiel had been that for her, as long as he could.

After the war, he'd said he could no longer lead, not with no one at his side. So she told him she'd be his Shiva. The destruction to his peace. The iron fist to his open hand. The queen to his king.

The sleeping together came after, as did the relationship. It was easy, natural, the thing that happened when two lonely people shared a bedchamber for long enough and got along well enough. Made enough of their daily decisions together. They understood each other; the masks they were willing to wear for other people. And the truths beneath.

"We were never right, romantically," she said. "You pretend like you don't know it, because you care for me and you think if you say that, I'll think you're rejecting me. I'm smarter than that, Zeke, and you damned well know it. And I'm old enough to see past the fairy tales and butterflies. I'm a good lay and I'm a better general, but mostly, you'll miss your old friend."

He shouted with laughter and grinned. "I will. I will, at that."

"But you'll also be charming some sweet young thing by next month," Carol said dryly.

His eyes twinkled. "Perhaps. Though it may take longer than that to adjust to a lesser woman than you, my queen."

"I doubt it," she deadpanned. "You forget, I know what a horny old goat you are under all that chivalry."

"You do." He laughed again, with the sharper bark of when he dropped his rolling kingly accent. The voice no one but her had heard in years.

The forest quieted around them once more, and he closed his hand over the ring, his face going pensive.

"I always thought," he said, "that you weren't the kind of woman who could really _be_ married, not all the way. There was always so much of you that didn't have anything to do with me or Henry or the Kingdom. You were like a wild animal that had decided to graze our pastures for a little while, but could jump the fence any time they pleased. Even years after we stopped mentioning the deal, it always felt like what we had was for just a little while, and then I'd have to give you back."

He smiled, his dark eyes sadder than his face.

"Honestly, I didn't think I'd live to see it, so I put it out of my mind."

"I'm glad you did," she said. "Live to see it."

"I was wrong, though."

She frowned. This was the first bit that hadn't gone as she expected with him. "Ezekiel, I know my own mind. I'm not going to change—"

"Not about that. Today. I should have known the day would be today, because that's when I saw you could belong fully to a person. To match them so thoroughly that you'd be giving nothing up to stay by their side. Not just for a little while, but forever."

He met her eyes, and she remembered when he'd glanced back at her and Daryl when he was riding in front of them. How long he'd looked.

She glanced away, a little heat tickling beneath her cheeks. She couldn't have said why, if it was guilt or just feeling too exposed that an outsider had seen the intimacy of that moment.

"Ah." Ezekiel touched the point of her chin, and raised it so gently that tears bit her eyes for the first time. "That's why I'll not fight you to stay, Queen Carol. You never blushed for me." He gestured to the forest where Daryl patrolled their camp's border, using the hand that held her old ring. "I wish that for you. I always did."

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#

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_Author's Note: Hello, my friends! I hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed writing it. Toward the end, Ezekiel means that she's a queen, even if she has no king or kingdom, even without him. She just IS. I couldn't work in a clarification without ruining the rhythm of the ending there._

_I have 1-2 more happy chapters that aren't written yet, so it might be a minute before I get to post, but hopefully they can be a nice post-finale pick me up for anybody whose heart ends up wounded by whatever happens tonight in the S9 finale! *hugs and Carol cookies for everyone*_


	4. Chapter 4: What He Doesn't See

_Author's Note: Quick reminder, this fic was written before the 9x16 finale aired, so some details will differ from the episode, and it is fully off-canon by this scene. _

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**Chapter 4: What He Doesn't See**

The dawn came early, and cold like the blade of a knife left out in the snow all night. It felt odd and off-balance from the start, though maybe that was just because Daryl knew Carol hadn't slept by the king last night.

She took the watch just before Daryl's, so she woke him the way she always had through the years when it was time to change watch. With a hum, low and soft in her throat, the notes always the same though he'd never been able to place the song. Only laying a hand on his chest after she knew he'd started to wake. Her hand was always warm, even in the dead of winter, and it only ever stayed for a second. Resting with him for not ever long enough before it was gone and he had to rouse himself to stand guard over their people.

Last night, it had been the same. But when she settled in to sleep, it wasn't near the king or the Kingdom people. Wasn't by where he'd left his blanket, either, or in the midst of their oldest Alexandrian friends. She lay down between the children and the forest, claiming her own place. He didn't even walk past her during his watch, just kept an eye out from afar. Maybe he'd pushed too hard, today. Asking her questions like he had any right to, the week after he'd gotten her kid killed.

He'd let her have whatever space she needed, always had. Except for that one night before Atlanta, when he knew she was leaving and he wouldn't let her go. He hadn't been wrong, then, and he wouldn't take it back, even if maybe a different path might not have got Beth killed. No way to know which dominos kicked down which, so many years later.

What he did know was that winter was coming, and Alpha's rotting army right along behind it. Walkers moved slower in the snow, so they'd have that advantage, but humans didn't do so hot in it, either. He knew the choices that lay ahead of them today, and they weren't good.

Carol had woken before him, so he didn't see her until everybody was all lined up and nearly ready to go. She was packing her things onto her horse and he came up behind her.

"You on board with crossing Alpha's borders?" he grunted.

The leaders had had a quick chat about it this morning, agreed there was no other way. He'd been surprised Ezekiel had been the one to put forth the idea. Seemed a little ballsier than the old grandstander usually went for, but then he'd been wrong about Ezekiel before. Could happen again.

Still, if they were going to march right past the pikes that still held her son's blood, he wanted to hear it straight from Carol's mouth that it was her choice to do so. If it wasn't, he wouldn't make her go, no matter how many kings and leaders voted that it was the only way.

"It was my idea." She closed her saddlebag and patted her horse on its neck before tying its lead rope to the back of the wagon. On the first day, her horse wouldn't stop fussing and crowhopping, fighting the bit at every bend in the road. It was how Daryl had known for sure Carol wasn't okay, no matter how placid her face. Couldn't lie to a horse. That's why he'd always hated them.

His motorcycle didn't care if he was scared shitless every time he roared into bullet range or leaned in toward an explosion. It carried him there just as fast, fear or no fear. Horses always gave his emotions away. He didn't blame Carol for choosing to walk.

He swooped up her gloves and her bow from where they rested against a tree, and handed them over.

"You didn't think Ezekiel came up with that one on his own, did you?" She arched an eyebrow, a little laughter sparkling in her eyes.

Daryl chuffed a laugh, his cheeks tightening under a bit of a smile. "Nah. Really didn't."

She took the bow, accepted the gloves.

"You hungry? I saved back a little jerky and you could—"

The words stopped coming out of his mouth as she tugged her glove on over bare fingers.

Bare.

Fingers.

They were covered now, but he knew what he'd seen. He wanted to look from her hand to her eyes and know what this meant. Why today. If it was because of grief and Henry, or losing the Kingdom, or if it had anything to do with the way Carol had gone utterly still yesterday when she saw him looking at Ezekiel's ring claiming her hand.

He couldn't look. Couldn't move. All around them, people were picking up their packs and setting off and he couldn't even pretend. It was the same reason he'd never asked flat out, all those years. Because if he did, he'd know the answer. And it might not be yes.

"I used to flirt with you." Carol checked the string on her bow and slung it onto her back. "All these little looks and nudges, whatever little touches you'd let me get away with. A comment, here and there. You just ignored me and so finally, when we got fences and the prison, I asked you flat out." She was looking at him. Even without raising his face, he could feel the directness of her gaze. "I asked if you wanted to fool around, and you told me to stop. So I did."

That shocked him enough to scowl. "I ain't—didn't think you were—didn't mean…" He stuttered off into silence and she waited for a minute, and then let out a soft breath.

"I was afraid of that. That you hadn't realized I meant it. But I didn't want to push you too hard by asking again. Because I was wrong. When I look at you, I don't _just _see you and everything I love about the man you've become—the strength, the loyalty, the way you never, _never_ fucking lie."

Her cheekbones were so high and regal, she looked like a queen even when she swore. She looked like a queen who had just said she loved him.

"I see everything I've been, from who I was when you handed me the pickaxe to finish Ed, to when you gave me my knife, to the first time I really felt I knew how to use it. How good it felt in my hand when I held it against the neck of another abusive man and MADE him listen to me, the way I never got the chance to with Ed."

She tilted her head and people started to trudge on out of camp, giving them a wide berth as if they knew better than to interrupt.

"When I look at you," she said, "I see the man who will always be my friend, but who I've also, always, wanted to be my partner."

He couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe.

"Look, I don't know if that's what you were really asking," Carol said. "If I saw you like that. It's never been the right time for us. There's always been someone we were grieving, someone we're fighting. Right now, it's both. I asked you once, and I never asked again because it's okay if you don't want that with me, Daryl." She took a step forward and touched his arm, squeezing hard just once like she wanted to make sure he was really listening. "It won't break me if you never love me the way a man loves his woman. I've loved you that way for years without being with you, and I've been okay. I've had boyfriends and different homes, and children and families. I've had a whole kingdom of my own. But I never stopped wanting you, and I never felt any different."

It started to snow, tiny fluffy little crystals drifting down to catch on her hat, to cling to the long silvery ends of her hair. Daryl couldn't stop looking at her, trying to see how different she must look now that she was saying these things that couldn't possibly be true, couldn't possibly be real. But she looked exactly the same.

"After Sophia I couldn't even look at you because I didn't want to feel more. I think you knew that because this time, you made me look, right at you, right after. You never gave me a moment to wish I could stop loving so I'd stop losing. You forced me to see and get past it, right away, that there's no living without loving, not for me." She gripped her coat in a fist, over her heart. "I feel, whether I want to or not. Whether I act on it or not."

She took a long breath. Everyone else in the group was gone, their footsteps still crunching through the trees.

"So now, I don't know if you were asking me, but I'm asking you. It's okay if you never do. But I'm in love with you, and if you are too, I'd like to live as partners, together. If all we have left is the few hours before we cross Alpha's borders, or if there's a whole other life filled with new people and more loss and more love on the other side of Alpha's army." She shrugged. "Either way, I want you."

He ducked his head, lifted it. Tried to speak and all that came out was a chuffed, strangled cough. But she waited. "Never woulda asked," he finally said. "You always been braver than me. Would have taken anything you'd give me, long as you wanted to give it, and died happy with even a tenth of that."

She smiled. This time, it sparkled all the way to her eyes in a way he hadn't seen in so long he'd forgotten she could beam like that. If he'd known he could make her smile that big, that bright, he'd have said this stuff years ago.

Carol held out her hand—her left, the one bare of a ring—and he took it. So hard and fast he probably squeezed her fingers too tight but she gripped him back just as fiercely.

And together, bows on their backs, they walked into the snow. Toward Alpha's bloody border.

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_Author's Note: Y'all, I am ecstatic about 9x16. ECSTATIC. I may never be sad again, after that episode. Also, thank you for all the incredibly kind and lovely reviews on this fic! You make me want to write 10 billion words of fanfic!_


	5. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Of all the things Carol might have expected to happen if they made it to Alexandria, a snowball fight wasn't one of them.

Up until the gates closed behind them, she still expected Alpha and her people to stagger out of the forest and catch them. At first, she couldn't even process the idea of throwing things at people you didn't intend to kill. Especially after such a long march, being so viciously on guard because she had Daryl with her, finally, in a way that practically dared the universe to take him away.

But then she saw Daryl gently toss a snowball at RJ, and his adorable surprised face when RJ rallied a handful right back at him, nailing his target with his mother's razor-sharp aim. And it loosened something in her chest, made her scoop up a handful to throw even though she hadn't been at all in the mood. By her third snowball, she'd almost smiled.

After the snowball fight, they'd chosen a house. Well, _she'd _chosen a house. One of the first ones they'd camped in back when the group was all still together and Alexandria was a foreign, fairy tale nation they were visiting. It was one of the smallest in the town, hunkered down with the secret bolt-hole to the outside mere footsteps away, the armory right behind it. It had a wide porch, and the kind of kitchen she used to dream about, back when she thought of such things.

"I'd like this to be ours," she told Daryl, standing in front of it.

He hesitated, shooting a look her direction that wasn't the one she'd hoped for.

"It doesn't have to be," she said steadily. "We're both used to having our own space. You can visit me here whenever you want, if that'd be easier. Dog, too." She pointed out the dog door already installed at the side.

He took her hand. The quickness of it sent a thrill through her. She'd have to get used to him reaching for her. She was looking forward to getting used to it, actually.

"Ain't that." He paused again. "I oughta stay with Lydia. Nobody else gonna want her, 'n the kid shouldn't be alone. I know what she been through. Should be me."

"Lydia will be right next door. The family there has two children close to her age, and they know where she came from. They don't hold it against her. There's an extra room, if she'd rather stay with us sometimes."

"Ain't asking you to do that. I get how you feel about her, after Henry. Wasn't her fault, kid hated what happened, but I know you can't change how you feel."

She squeezed his hand. "I know you're not asking me to. I'm saying it's okay, if that's what happens. But you're gone outside the gate a lot. It'll be good for her to have a more stable family that's around all the time. She's lucky to have both."

He chuffed out a breath, moving and shuffling his feet in a way that made her realize how stone-still he'd gone before.

"Yeah." He nodded, taking a second, long look at the house. "This is good."

"Oh, the kitchen's better than good. And it's got a second sink and counter in the garage for butchering game." She pulled him toward the house. "Wait until you see."

She was excited to show him all about the house, but as soon as the door closed behind them, it seemed quieter than anywhere she'd ever been. It was theirs.

They had a _theirs._

She caught her breath and glanced at him, just in time to see him checking on her. His hand came up slowly, the palm muffled by rough wool glove but the fingers bare and cold when they touched her cheek. He stepped in and God, he felt taller than she remembered him but he'd never been this close before and—his lips came down toward hers. Slowly, by degrees with his eyes flicking between hers and her mouth.

_Is it too soon?_ All his body language was asking the same question, and if he'd asked in words, she would have said, _Yes._ But somehow, with him leaning into her with the scent of wet wool and snow on his hair, she unwound. In her chest, then her knees, her lips parting slightly like she was all but panting by the time he reached her. One split second of a soft kiss, then more and more and more as they got rougher and more urgent. His kiss was a concentration of that steady link she always felt when he came near, and she wanted to drink it down.

She pulled at his poncho and his big hands found her skin under her coat. Her scarf got so tangled it half choked her before they got it off. The house was cold, but she didn't feel it, not even when her shirt came off over her head.

_It's too soon,_ she would have said. _We can take all the time we need._

But as soon as they were alone inside their own house, all the time they needed turned out to not even be enough to make it upstairs.

#

Later that night, in the bed they'd chosen for themselves without discussion, she was still getting used to the sensation of his bare skin against hers. How he smelled the same as he always had, but she could feel so much more. It was astounding to her, what being able to touch him did to her. Most days, she felt like she'd lived three lifetimes and seen more of the world than she ever wanted to but that…that was something she hadn't known to wish for.

She thought because she'd had sex before, that it couldn't be new to her. She'd been wrong. These feelings were twisting up inside her chest and heaving out in big breaths, so even after their third time together she couldn't stop running her hands over him. Nuzzling her head a little deeper into his shoulder.

He didn't seem to mind.

It was late, the moon long past risen outside and the passes of her hand over his electric, scar-laced skin were starting to slow, her eyelids drooping. She didn't want to miss a single second of this, their first night together, but she was so sleepy and he was so warm.

His voice, when it came, was gruff. Like wool scraping tree bark in the darkness of a long winter night.

"Did you say those things, last night, 'cause you thought we were gonna die?"

It was a plain question, plainly asked. She knew he wouldn't hold the answer against her, and there wasn't much insecurity in the question. He wasn't fishing. But it was something he was holding onto, a weight under his heart she didn't want him to have. She covered the center of his chest with her hand, feeling each great big thump like a promise of something better.

"I said them because I was afraid I might live. And I needed a reason to want to."


End file.
